As the advertising industry flocks to the South of France for the Cannes Lions Festival this week, we thought a lot about how we could leave our beach spot even cleaner than we found it. That mindset led us to 4ocean, a business whose mission is to remove trash from beaches, one pound at a time. They utilize the sales of their products, made from post-consumer recycled materials to fund ocean cleanup operations around the world. In fact, every item purchased from 4ocean funds the removal of at least one pound of trash from our beaches.

4ocean started in 2015, when co-founders Andrew Cooper and Alex Shulze took a surf trip to Bali and were dismayed to find the beaches covered in garbage. They were inspired to create something that could help restore the beach to its natural state and that led to the birth of 4ocean. Now as a global beach clean up company, they have removed over 4.5 million pounds of trash and plastic from the oceans and coastlines across 27 countries.

Inspired by their mission, we were excited to have found an opportunity that allowed us to make a bigger impact during our time at Cannes. We purchased 500 4ocean bracelets to hand out to guests at our beach party to not only host the cleanest beach bash in Cannes history, but also to give back to the planet in a small way. Our guests can wear their bracelets knowing they represent one of the 500 pounds that will be cleaned up from our oceans.

In addition to the 500 bracelets, OpenX is doing our part not to use plastic at the OpenX/MMA Beach throughout the week while also encouraging guests to avoid single use plastic when attending our events.

There is no better place to raise awareness for 4ocean than a beach party. We’re hoping we inspire the Cannes Lions attendees to be mindful of the plastic they leave behind and be proud that they are part of 500 more pounds of trash being cleaned up from the ocean.

We look forward to seeing all of our guests on the beach the rest of this week wearing their 4ocean bracelets with pride and couldn’t be happier that we had a hand in helping clean up the Cannes beach and oceans around the world.

Interested in learning more about these bracelets and purchasing one of your own? Click here!